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I love a novelty/ themed make, but I similarly hate the thought of making something I won’t wear. What a waste of my own labour. However, when I started my new job recently there was something I had to attempt…

I work for the Crystal Maze experience in Manchester, which is awesome. I’m not going to say much about my work on here, but rest assured the experience itself is just like the original show, only you are the star! As a big fan of the original series, I had to make something I could wear to commemorate the occasion. There were a couple of options. I could make something Mumsie would be partial to, or perhaps one of the iconic bomber jackets?

I decided to make Richard O’Brien’s leopard print coat. I don’t usually wear anything with animal print, but I thought for this I could make an exception. The fabric is a pretty nasty cheap thing I got from Ebay, but luckily it didn’t sew up as badly as I expected. I was anticipating fluff everywhere. Maybe this fabric was so synthetic it didn’t understand that was a thing fake fur does?

I ‘drafted’ a pattern from a second hand coat I love, which can be seen here during last year’s Me Made May-

This photo seems like an age ago. Also, can you believe it’s nearly Me Made May again? I need to start thinking about that. I say drafted, it was actually traced from the coat. I haven’t done that on a whole item before, and especially not with sleeves, so I was a bit nervous. It wasn’t perfect, but I made it work.

I’ve never really attempted a coat before but using With Wendy’s Youtube tutorial made it really easy.

I basically followed this tutorial the whole way, with a slight alteration. My coat has a shawl collar, and a small curved rectangle piece at the back of the neck. Having this and the facing sewn in created quite a thick fabric, which means it stands up really nicely. It’s a feature I’m very pleased with.

For the majority of this make I was singing the praises of this fabric. It doesn’t need much pressing, I can just use my fingers! It’s great, the fake fur means it stays in place really well with minimal pins! It’s soft! That was, until it came to fastenings. I had planned on copying the original coat in button placement, but that would have been about 5 button holes.

This coat ate up my sewing machine like nothing else. It caused my actual footplate to rip off at least twice, sewn into the fabric in a horrific clump. My footplate! I had to unscrew the entire foot to get it away from it every single time, and it was nightmarish. I sat down one evening, expecting the buttons to be finished in an hour, and ended up there all night, saying rather unsavoury things to this coat.

I came back the next evening, muttering ‘one buttonhole, just one.’ I made a large buttonhole in the middle of the length (roughly), and worked out where I could sew the button on the other side for best coverage. I didn’t spend too long on this, I was at the ‘well, everyone dies’ stage of sewing.

I think wearing it buttoned up makes it look like a Richard Cheese outfit! Now it’s finished. I hope Richard O’Brien would understand that creative journey of hating your work at some point before it’s finished. Even though it was made with the understanding it’s an unusual garment for me, I actually will wear this. It feels cool.